Theodore Dreiser 
Financier 

Acclaimed American journalist and fiction writer penned a number of noteworthy classics in his day, including Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. His 1912 novel The Financier was the first in a trilogy of works following the life and career of Frank Cowperwood, a Philadelphia-born entrepreneur whose rising fortunes and intermittent disasters are emblematic of many of those who populated nineteenth-century America.